Model-making is often used in vehicle industries like the automotive industry. In that industry, designers make full-scale automobile models out of a suitable clay to get a general look and feel of their design before the automobile is produced and sold. Designers also make full-scale, life-like models from a suitable foam for showing off future automobile designs at trade shows. In both cases, a base assembly is commonly used as sort of a pedestal for the models. Some base assemblies are made to be steerable and wheel driven like a real automobile, and some are not. Traditionally, steel castings have been used for both these drivable and nondrivable base assemblies.
Although the steel castings have been in use for a long time, they have some drawbacks. For one thing, the castings are often unwieldy. As mentioned, they are sized for a full-scale automobile and made from solid steel; this can make them difficult to handle in the design facility and in shipping. For another thing, the castings can be costly. Besides being cast entirely from steel, each one is usually customized to a particular automobile. For manufacturers, this means that the same casting for a small automobile, like a passenger car, cannot be used for a larger one, like a sport-utility-vehicle. And as a result, manufacturers have to buy a casting for each model.
What is needed is a base assembly that is easier to handle than the traditional one, and what is also needed is a modular base assembly that can be used for modeling more than one size automobile that will thereby reduce costs.